[Music] good morning and welcome to day two of 2021 summit i'm susan reno executive director of eris on behalf of my counterpart david phipps from research impact canada i would like to thank our sponsors the future skills center the national science foundation heiress rick and the michigan state university office of outreach and engagement and i would also like to welcome all of you especially any first-timers to the summit if you have any questions about what's going on here don't hesitate to reach out we would love to talk with you so first a little housekeeping at the bottom of the my events tab in the hub there's a link to a daily road check and the daily road check is our way to do evaluation of the summit so this afternoon it will pop up please go in and fill out the evaluations as an nsf funded center and supporter we really need your evaluation help so please do that also near the same place you'll find a list of prize winners for each day if you've been to the summit before you know i love to give things away if you've got a swag bag you'll notice there's socks and all kinds of fun things i think that just makes the experience a little more fun so there at the bottom of the buy events tab is something called we have a winner and it lists all the prize winners for each day so congratulations to dennis schatz for being an impact worked the longest and grad student jenny gutierrez for being the newest member of our impact community congratulations also to hilda smith and julie farley for winning our social hour match game and if you missed our social hour last night you missed a treat but there will be more opportunities for you to win over the next couple days as i mentioned yesterday in a virtual environment sometimes it's hard to get to know one another but i encourage you to find ways to interact in our breakout sessions and to use the attendee hub to reach out i also encourage you to use our hashtag impax21 and to post photos of your conference experience occasional visitors that means all pets we welcome cats dogs kids whatever it is that happens to wander through your area we welcome them if you want to send pictures of crazy and innovative things you're doing with your aerosprick socks and any insights you have from being part of the group use our hashtag which is hashtag impax21 before we move on into the programming for the day which is really wonderful and exciting i want to take a minute to thank several special people for their service to heiress kevin neemi has served on the heiress leadership team since our founding and nabby before that he was he recently retired from the university of wisconsin-madison and from the heiress team he was an integral part of who we are and we wouldn't be here without him kevin thank you very much for your service i would also like to recognize several members of the heiress council of experts who have reached the end of their terms kay koizumi john saltmarsh debbie hanison beth ambos ruth jones and jason cisco we thank you for your service and continued support now for a little fun here is your first opportunity today to win a prize one of the questions that was asked during the social hour match game was if eris had a mascot what would it be so please draw a picture of the heiress mascot whatever you think it should be and tweet it to hashtag impacts21 will draw a name from the people who tweet a photo also if your mascot is selected you will win a prize as well this is a great use for the aeris rick white board that was in your swag bag and i will go first now i have to tell you i'm the worst at drawing things and i might even have to take my background off so you can see it so don't judge my drawing but yesterday somebody said let's see if we can make this work all right i'm gonna have to take off my background you can see my office somebody said that eris was like a warm teddy bear so this is my um terrible drawing of a teddy bear but you can see it's on my aerosprick white board so i encourage you to tweet at hashtag impacts21 tell us what you think the um heiress mascot should be and we will draw a prize so today we're really excited we're going to really focus on the intersection of public engagement and workforce development i'm really happy for this opening panel i think the day is going to be great we're opening with this great panel we're going to have dr vick mccrary from the national science board there um to end it and then tonight i invite all of you to tune in for the heiress awards ceremony it's the first time we've had a virtual award ceremony it's going to be fun there's going to be lots of interesting things we'll be honoring our fellows we'll be honoring the auric pilot institutions announcing the first year cohort we'll be honoring all the fellows from the first two years and announcing the ones for this year um all of our award winners and our three new bi champions so make sure you don't miss it now i'm going to turn it over to tom tuban from aris and connie tang from rick thanks susan and good morning everyone i'm tom tuban along with my colleague from research impact canada connie tang we're excited to present the opening plenary on leadership perspectives at the nexus of societal impacts the heiress rick summit this year represents not only a shining example of working partnerships but an international collaboration that brings an awareness of the importance that research professionals educators policy makers community and government stakeholders all have in the area of education and workforce development workforce activities may take these numerous different forms from mentored research and experience based learning to high school and community based programs that target industry competencies and specific skill sets that we uh all embrace the outcomes of these activities are what unify and connect us all workforce initiatives serve the important function of increasing representation of diverse communities in the science and technology enterprise and secure investments and economic growth when we strip away all the hard work to develop these programs to engage our communities and bring about awareness of new and emerging career pathways we're left with a really simple question and that is collectively can we make this a better world for our children and the communities that we serve as broader impact professionals we work to move the needle for change and progress the distinguished speakers in the opening plenary today represent lifelong efforts for change and impact in education and workforce development it's with great pleasure that i introduced russ reed who will be moderating the plenary russ is a native of montreal canada and a naturalized american residing in winston-salem north carolina he spent 30 years in the biopharmaceutical industry rising to the level of a ceo of a startup research company prior to becoming the executive director of the national center for the biotechnology workforce a part of forsyth technical community college russ leads the effort for education and workforce development of the nsf innovate bio national center for biotechnology education res thank you for all you do and at this point i'll turn it over to you tom connie thank you so much and i i have to say this because my colleagues are there is bonjour tulamondo canada i'm very very pleased today to uh introduce this panel very very excited about it so i'm going to just quickly introduce our guest dr manju azure banner g major is the vice president of education and research and innovation at landmark college in putney vermont dr banerjee has over 35 years of experience in learning disabilities adhd and post-secondary disability services she is a board member of the learning disability association of america and she has a doctorate from the ed school of education university of connecticut on the application of universal design to high stakes assessment second welcome uh majou to the panel second on our panel is emily derocco the honorable emily derocco ceo of e3 engage educate employ and is the former vice president and of education and workforce for the manufacturing innovation institute known mostly to us as lyft she is a former assistant secretary of labor for employment and training of the u.s government she is currently serves as a senior advisor on education and workforce development for the u.s department of defense manufacturing technology program and she is a graduate of the georgetown law center welcome emily dr gary green is the president of gmg strategies llc and chief workforce development officer with the wake forest institute for regenerative medicine and the regenerative medicine development organization here in winston-salem dr greene served as president of forsyth technical community college from the year 2001 to 2018 he has his doctorate from the university of kentucky i want to welcome you gary to the panel we've known each other a long time and i wouldn't be on this panel monitoring if it hadn't been for your wisdom thank you i'm very excited about this panel um you know we actually have a good representation of some key influencers in workforce and also from the academic point of view so i'm going to get into this we're going to have a series of questions but the first few questions i'm going to ask the panel um are directly uh directly looking at a little bit of the future of stem so um i would like to ask each one of you and please take take a few minutes to uh give your responses think this through what are the top three challenges that you see in the development of futures the future stem workforce and major you're up in my upper left hand part of my panel on the on the video so i'm going to start with you thank you russ and thank you panel looking forward to this um so in terms of just to give you a little quick background i'm at landmark college and landmark college is unique in that it is one of only two colleges in the nation that exclusively works with neurodiverse populations and that i think is one of our biggest challenges uh we know that post-secondary institutions are knowledge incubators and suppliers of the labor force uh preparing them in skills necessary for business and corporate america yet the stereotypes and beliefs around ableism that still exist in our society are huge deterrents for our individuals who learn differently to join the labor force in fact just in february this year bureau of labor statistics released data which showed that only 17.9 percent of individuals disabilities were employed compared to 61.8 percent of those without
disabilities and here's another shocking statistics one million people with disabilities lost their jobs since the start of the pandemic a significantly disproportionate population compared to those without disabilities i really believe that we are losing out on a large proportion of the labor force by excluding consciously or not individual potential employees who learn differently who are neurodiverse the other big challenge that i'm hearing is people are questioning the return on investment of higher education and are asking is four years of a baccalaureate degree or even two years of an associate degree worth it but for the current labor force and we know there's a gallup poll that came out in 2016 that talked about how industry believes that many of the universities that are preparing our candidates for the workforce are not developing the skills necessary for the 21st century workplace a big concern and the last one i'll say which is kind of related to the other two points is that this belief that scalability requires kind of like absolute conformity to standardized approaches whether it's around hiring whether it's around interviewing whether it's around the job place expectations and that is absolutely not the case so i rest my case there thank you mahju i would like to take it over to emily and have the same questions uh same uh responses to you this particular question emily the future of stemworld sure thank you russ and manchu i think you and i could have rehearsed stars together had we had a an earlier conversation um and each of us brings our own lens or perspective to um the priority challenges because there are many confronting us in developing america's educated and skilled workforce so you're going to hear a little bit of my slant for the stem workforce in the field of advanced manufacturing which is where my heart and soul reside today first i'm going to cite the challenge of a country that has both a skill shortage and a skills gap it's only been recently that we've really begun to parse this skills issue that is much debated and and to understand that there really are two very distinct challenges embedded therein first there is this acute and growing industrial skills shortage in most of our traditional occupations across many economic sectors and we know that that could take decades to reverse and there are a lot of reasons for that i won't go into those initially here in this opening question the talent pipeline though for these careers seems to be clogged and we need to do something about that and then on the side of the skills gap that gap really reflects the rapidly advancing technology that's outpacing talent development across the board impacting industries investment decisions and its ability to grow and create jobs so that's our first big challenge the second is a little bit controversial our education and workforce development systems are simply not keeping pace with the infusion of technology across all economic sectors and these systems are disconnected from the needs of job creators and an understanding of the competencies new competencies that are required for individuals to be successful in our 21st century workplaces and finally and much on a much higher level actually i believe we have moved beyond a knowledge economy in this country where the aggregation of knowledge and degrees was the goal to now a performance-based economy where the application of that knowledge and skills is the most critical our move to competency-based education and blended learning as a result of this performance-based economy and its requirements means that our proficiency assessments and blended learning are simply not moving fast enough so russ those would be the three challenges i would cite emily um you always sum these things up so clearly i want to thank you for that gary what are your perspectives on this well uh i'm tempted just to say ditto because many of my thoughts are mirrored in manju and emily's previous remarks uh but but first i want to thank eris and rick for the opportunity to be here and your sponsors for opportunity to be here and participate in the conversation today this is this is an exciting opportunity and i also start with the rapid nature of technological and economic change that is driving um the economy it's driving the workplace and and even more broadly driving society today um and and i and i uh come from a community college background uh having served as a community college president but currently are engaged with uh sort of a high-tech scientific field of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering which is a rapidly changing and growing sector of biotechnology in the biosciences today and the workplace today is driven by concepts and technology that we weren't even thinking about a few years ago practically every meeting that i have and talking about uh the the workforce for the future is now about ai and machine learning and it's about blockchain and it's about the internet of not just things but the internet of everything uh today and what that means in terms of the need for us to be thinking about the workforce uh as as as prepared in converging technologies not just a single technology but converging uh technologies um so is is ai and and machine learning coming out of the eye of it uh it combines with with crispr and and tissue engineering and regenerative medicine uh for the latest uh products uh to be uh developed in in coming out of biotech it takes a whole new thinking about the kind of workforce that's that's developed and and on the horizon we have transformative technologies that are going to change biotech biopharmaceuticals uh and and what will be i think the technologies of the next generation and that is is bio technologies maybe more so than than information technologies of today uh transformative technologies like like the body on a chip uh work uh where we can now recreate uh organs uh on on a chip combining uh regenerative medicine with microfluidics uh for a host of applications that will change the world of bio products in the future and are really driving this transition from research to clinical translation and then ultimately to scaled biomanufacturing so that that kind of rapid technological change that introduces new concepts and new products that weren't even thought of a few years ago the second point i would make and it's already kind of been made is is the the labor shortage and i would combine that with demographic change um i was thinking about uh emily and i actually were on a uh a study group in the department of commerce about 12 13 years ago i think it was emily manufacturing 2040. and uh part of the conclusions at that time are were really prescient of of the way things have evolved and that is that manufacturing was going to be driven by technology and change that there was going to be a labor shortage uh in the future of individuals who have the capacity to to work in that kind of manufacturing environment that was driven by technology and that that that the growth and development of technology in in manufacturing would uh would continue unless the supply chain was interrupted by some geopolitical event or other event that was unforeseen so where are we today you know uh we've seen all of those things occur uh and to address the labor shortage that we're seeing in the and the fact that that that the skills gap kind of quantifies that shortage and and specifies where it occurs in various sectors of of the economy including manufacturing health care and and others the we have to we have to also address and think about demographic change and that means we have to have a much more inclusive approach to workforce development and manju mentioned that particularly with with uh ensuring that that that people of varying abilities are able to participate in the workforce today so it includes the those components of our population obviously it includes people of color includes women if you look at what has happened over the last 12 months it has pointed out the inequities of participation in the workplace that have to be addressed and if in order for us to deal with the labor shortage and deal with the skills gap the other the third point i would make and and i guess this sort of comes from from my background as a college president is the need for greater support and greater investments in workforce development in order to make all of this happen and i don't think you can get away from that from the k-12 system stem stem education in the k-12 system to community college role in preparing the skilled technical workforce for the future that having to merge with and connect with university education because no longer can no longer can we really survive economically on just the k-12 preparation or the community college preparation but there have to be those pathways and lattices that connect to other sectors of the broader educational and training environment you know we've built a um we built a rather remarkable research infrastructure in our country by looking at at how government connects and supports universities which connects with the private sector that that government academic private sector of continuum that that's built a remarkable research capability that really drives the new science and the new technologies that are present today i would suggest that we need to think about workforce sort of in in the same way uh we need to think about the kinds of investments that made us a world leader in in research and how the same model might even apply to developing a world-class workforce the investments that come through through grants through indirect support for for research activities and in other ways in which the government is supporting the the academic environment which is supporting the private sector employment sector i think there are ways in their models that that we can look at to to address how we can support in new ways uh the workforce development and educational preparation for for the new economy and and the new jobs and more importantly the new careers that are being developed gary if i may and russ we promised we were going to interrupt each other so i'm going to i'll be the bad penny that starts that i want to go back to what i think was your point too when you reference so this is should just be a wake-up call i think for all of us not just on the panel our audience as well and those we work with when you and i a decade ago you said we're working on a report on the preparing the workforce for 2040. um we have just commenced uh leadership at the department of defense across the federal government to rewrite and re-envision what is the national manufacturing strategy for this country from 2018 to one for 2022 believing that four years is almost too long in order to put all the brains together for the the kind of disruptive innovation that certainly is occurring in education and workforce development or should occur in um education and workforce development to prepare an educated and skilled workforce that's going to drive our future in manufacturing and that just begins to align the thinking around the speed with which technology and technology and fusion are the disruptive innovators in economic sectors and for our job creators so i just thought it was interesting that you raised that um rather than long-term vision uh i think we're afraid that that took too long and now we have to shorten and get smarter about accelerating the pace of change in this country so so emily thank you gary thank you so that leads me to the next question really which is implementation and i'd like to start with majou and i just i'd like to to say major it really struck me when you said that a million people with disabilities lost their positions during the pandemic and there was something else that was pretty common to the introductory talks from each one of you which was this whole idea about competencies or credentials and so major i just want to um ask you so we hear what the challenges are what are the solutions yeah yeah thank you russ and it's just fascinating listening to uh emily and gary and kind of how our thoughts intersect here um i want to start with one of the issues which is again you can see my bias because i work with neurodiverse populations but this this notion of access and accessibility for too long we've used accessibility as a checklist i want to be just checked off and then we are all fine but where we are moving and i think part of the solution lies there is this notion of accessible design based on the tenets of universal design which is whatever works for individuals who learn differently or are differently able actually benefits everybody and if we can start thinking of and this term is often used born accessible products that are designed to be accessible from the beginning then we have already benefited not just individuals who are who are neurodiverse but the entire workforce population but here's my point access and accessibility is only a starting point it is not the goal and it cannot be the goal for any national international science technology enterprise because accessibility is only the first step in getting to where we want to get what really matters is language and language unless it is backed by a action so words like social justice that we hear so much about we hear about diversity equity inclusion so much of that these can become buzz words on the shelves of dusty books in a library rack unless they are backed by action and i love what i heard emily and gary say about technology and where the new frontiers of technology are being explored but at the other end we also see the technology divide and that continues in a whole issue of broadband when we went digital there was there were families here in vermont that were driving to their school parking lot and sitting there for four hours so that they're in the car so that their students sons and daughters could do their homework that divide is very real and the affordances of technology are still out of reach of many so what can we do one suggestion is data data has power and data needs to be disseminated it's disseminated in pockets and there's still a lot of people who don't have access to the data which talks about all of these exciting initiatives that these companies like sap and microsoft and others are doing around autism at work for example we know about them because we are involved with them we are in partnership with them but it is amazing how the general public does not know about so many of the initiatives that organizations like here eris and others a national science foundation are doing they are considered to be the realm of the elite or in the know and i think one of the first things we have to do as a as a solution is to kind of break down that barrier we unfortunately despite so many efforts to integrate and collaborate uh i still work in our individual silos and find ways to break that silo is an important first step and the second one as i said is to break down the mindset of ableism which is the belief that you must have certain core mental and physical abilities to lead a normal life in society and that as we know at landmark is so untrue i'll just share this personal little insight and then stop when i was in 11th grade i was told by my my my teachers told my parents she is never going to pass high school and if by luck some luck she does just get her married and that's as far as she will go i have two masters two bachelors and a phd so so it's it's really important for stakeholders to understand the mental scar and damage that they create by not really the understanding the gestalt of the capabilities i don't mean people who learn differently have special talent i think it's individual and that's what we need to do is to rethink the traditional protocols around the workforce that we have established for so long thank you uh russ uh i would like to comment on uh speaking very absolutely uh true but it it also reminds me as we talk about technologies as a challenge there's the other side of that and that is the technologies that are an opportunity and as as i think about broadening the workforce and and opening our workforce to uh individuals with varying abilities um whatever they might be technology provides an opportunity to do that that perhaps has never been true before we think about um such things as as machine learning and ai and robotics as as eliminating jobs it's also opening up opportunities for those with varying abilities to work in a hybrid environment with those technologies with robots for example to accomplish uh tasks and open up new opportunities and is in the area emily's working in and manufacturing and as well as in other fields to uh to individuals that might not have had that ability before without the assisted nature of some of the technologies that are now uh a part of the production and are going to be a part of that in the future so i think uh i think you're absolutely right it's it's technology is opening up new opportunities for the very people that you're describing uh of mind you and we need to take advantage and bring those people into the workforce in much greater numbers and we do have some comments regarding this area i think it's fascinating you know that we we have this gap uh we need all these people and yet uh you know sometimes in the past people have said well science is only for the nerds you know that's right can you can you take that forward for us a little bit right well you know me russia i'm uh i have very practical solutions i think that uh we're pursuing and i want to pause for just a minute because i'm not i never want to presume that everyone in our audience has an understanding of what the manufacturing innovation institutes are that you introduced um uh early on and uh i just want to say that these are public-private partnerships that are uniquely positioned because of their dual mission of technology and talent development and their placement across the country focused on the a multitude of the modernization technology priorities that are impacting not only our defense and national security but also our economy broadly so these uniquely positioned institutes and the work we're doing at dod is an effort to create an enterprise level collective impact set of strategies about how we're going to deal with this alignment of technology development changing the course of competencies knowledges and skills needed and talent development meaning not just an opportunity to use new technologies in education and workforce development but quite frankly to use technology to disrupt the current systems and help us reform what have been our career technical education systems our engineering programs of study and make them more um responsive to these new competency requirements and needs so in that context i want to um just cite two very practical uses of the manufacturing innovation institute that illustrate the kinds of solutions that i think manju and gary were both getting at when the institutes were first formed and the evolution has only been since 2014 so um the birth was relatively recent but in their early days the first couple of years there was real national debate about whether or not these institutes had any role in education and workforce development they were core missions central for technology r d well that passed very quickly as not the right approach because that began to drive an even deeper wedge between the changes in the jobs and occupations due to technology infusion and the talent that our education and workforce systems were producing in this country so now and really since about 2016 all of the institutes have had a strong dual parallel mission of technology and talent development and in fact the educated and skilled workforce has been recognized as really the deployment strategy to ever get those technologies to market whether it's in the defense industrial base or in the commercial sector so if we need that educated and skilled workforce prepared to deploy the new technologies what i found when it was boots on the ground in detroit in the institute i started with before moving into the department of defense was that um generally tech developers and talent developers speak two different languages and i'm betting in the audience there are people who absolutely understand that but we found when you put the two together and find a translator between the two languages it's really quite a beautiful outcome so as an example we actually commissioned educators at the faculty and dean level from universities and community colleges just a small set we brought them into our institute made them part of the technology development teams and together through the course of about 18 months with guidance from a really strong facilitator they were able together to be to define the new knowledge and skill competencies required to deploy the technologies when they were ready to move out of prototype and beta manufacturing into full deployment and full production in this country so this alignment of technology and talent development has really been um a lesson for us and now we're looking at ways that we can bring that to scale so that's number one number two is much shorter but maybe even more important the second challenge that is of particular interest to us at the department of defense is the need to expand work based learning opportunities or performance-based learning at all levels in the continuum of education performance-based learning or work-based learning not just in what we knew in the past is vocational education in the last two years of high school and maybe in the community college setting but across the entire continuum as we are bringing our stem workforce up through k-12 into a two-year or a four-year higher ed environment and graduate school the days of rather traditional internships apprenticeships and co-ops also need to be disruptive and modernized and we need to be sure that we are giving every student the opportunity to learn in a performance-based learning environment and i'll get to this later but manju this is an area where we feel so strongly our national agenda and our regional interventions that are building new educational pathways and expanding talent acquisition pools with a strong diversity inclusion and equity agenda this is a an opportunity to innovate in education which is going to help develop those now underrepresented groups into the key jobs in every economic sector in our economy absolutely emily if i could just add i couldn't agree with you more one of the things we hear from some of our industry partners like sap microsoft dell etc is that they have their own uh diversity training programs and programs around autism networks etc and there is some feeling that this much of the curriculum of such a training should really be undertaken by the secondary institutions so that the organizations can actually focus on kind of having these people be part of their productivity team instead of having to go back and provide the training there was an interesting conversation we just hosted an event called navigating the workplace it's an annual event that we host here at walmart college and we invite our business partners corporate partners to come talk about uh what they are seeing and they are very enthused about neurodiverse potential neurodiverse employees but but the rest of the country and the rest of the employees within these organizations also need to understand and accept neurodiverse employees so acceptance has to be a two-way process we can work with students at our end at universities sarah to prepare them for the workforce but the workforce mindset also has to change particularly around social justice and and diversity and acceptance of all diversity i talk about neurodiversity but all different diversities and and and i think one of the things we realize is talk is cheap but it takes time and it takes effort and that's where things fall through yeah um and we talk often with since our institutes are really driven by um the demand sector by the the manufacturers who are members and driving the technology development um how uh what their role and responsibility should be in this area of providing workplace learning opportunities in implementing or executing parts of a dei agenda and interestingly this is all about language again just as we had to put the technology and talent developers together with a common language we understand that all of us need to be able to articulate both the workforce case which gary goes back primarily to the demographics of our population there is simply just not enough people for you not to be inclusive in your talent acquisition pool number one and there is a business case for um pursuing this which is also to fulfill the needs for a productive workforce um and one that is equitable inclusive and diverse and so um very definitely we believe that businesses have a role we believe education at all levels has a role and we believe government has an incentivizing and motivational role and for the first time i would be kind of interested when tom tuban comes back on the with a mic on his thoughts on this because together as we look at the work out of the department of defense and developing a workforce strategic framework that is being adopted across all federal agencies for the first time i see that triumvirate of industry academia and government with the same agenda and the same messaging so this is our moment in my estimation emily if i can interject um and i know i i know where this i know in my head where this question is going and i think that um all three of you uh will be able to uh put some good examples but are are there some good examples of cross-border uh uh learnings key learnings that we've learned maybe from our canadian colleagues or maybe from our european colleagues or somewhere else in the world where where these kinds of challenges have been extremely well addressed what are we leading the way or are we looking for models from other parts of the world i think of apprenticeships i think of germany i i think of um different ways of assessing people's competencies i look to europe how about a little bit uh more information with respect to some best practices from all of you sure well let me uh chime in real quickly we have uh partnered with king's college um leadership in the uk which has been looking for several years now at one of our biggest challenges here in the u.s which is what some people call the new color jobs i call them technicians they're higher level skilled workers in between again for manufacturing the designers who need graduate degree design capabilities and what we traditionally knew as the skilled graphs in trade each one of our economic sectors has this much bigger challenge in the field of a technician workforce that really ties those two ends of the work continuum together the uk got out ahead in terms of policy and research and exploration in that regard and so um we have had quite an excellent exchange with the uk experts as we continue to grow primarily through our community colleges gary that technician or workforce capability so that's number one um my personal experience in australia with their ship building industry the disconnect that that country had between what was their uh career and technical education system the tafe system and now a major 30-year shipbuilding enterprise with two new digitalized shipyards and a workforce that totally disconnected and did not have the kind of technical training necessary i think australia is we're beginning to see major advancements in their career and technical education and work based learning capabilities and what you and i might call apprenticeships i am the one that generally takes it two by four to the folks who say let's just do it the way germany does it because my response is we can't and we shouldn't um there needs to be um a much broader use of the apprenticeship model our problem in this country is the bureaucracy around the registered usdol engagement we haven't been able to crack that nut but i will say i believe the apprenticeship model and the important components of that model i.e
earn while you learn mentorship work based learning as well as theory and concept those are critically important and it is growing exponentially in every sector and we're very engaged in that and i look to canada always for great examples i'm hoping there's someone in in the room an audience that can bring me up to date or bring us up to date because it's been a few years since i've seen what hr sdi i think i got those initials right um might be doing in this regard of the skills councils in canada so um we should always look to models we should always look to collegial work in this area because every country is experiencing the same challenges it doesn't matter where you go the same discussions are being held and not all good ideas are going to be invented here so i hope we're embracing every good idea we can find russ let me jump in on on that and i want to i want to come to your international question but i want to go back for just a minute and talk a little bit about work work based learning or work integrated learning this is referred to other places canada um i i i want to reinforce what emily is saying about the importance of that but there are some particular kind of practices and there are some some particular issues that that really need to be looked at when it comes to how work based learning sometimes works on the ground one work-based learning can be a a k-12 to university to graduate to post-education lifelong learning opportunity um one because it's it's it starts with just exposure and it starts with just exposure to the workplace and that needs to start much earlier uh in our in our society uh it needs to start if to the extent with with career exploration in elementary school uh it needs as soon as uh uh young people have the ability to and and industries can show them what work looks like then it starts there and then it goes through the continuum in the including the more intensive employer-based apprenticeship and and even licensed apprenticeship and such so that's that's important but there are some elements of that that are important one is that we know that oftentimes individual with the least economic means students of color have less opportunity to be exposed through to work through work-based learning than than those who are not uh so there's an equity issue oftentimes with uh with work based learning with co-ops and internships and and such and some of those traditional ways uh and and that is in part uh economic um rush you you may know this because we work together within the college but but one of the things that i think that we need to insist on is there should be no unpaid uh work-based learning experiences other than just the the exposure kinds of work uh because that in and of itself uh becomes a barrier for too many people to to experience work-based learning that can lead to uh significant parts of their education for careers and and that that's in technology that's in manufacturing that's in health care that's across the board so that's very important i think um but and on the end and that we keep that in mind and we build that into our new thinking that needs to be done around work-based learning you know yes yeah well i would just that's just an important point i don't know if we're making a list of um policy recommendations that eventually this group could uh also rally around but we've just been working on this this issue that you raised around um the i call them work and earn because it we we also believe that uh work-based learning opportunities uh to um assure that there is a wage associated with it and a progressive wage as they advance and but here's the conundrum um for small and medium enterprises the cost of providing that um experience when profit margins are slim compared to our global giants it's almost impossible for them to take this on and as we look in the manufacturing field at the plight of smms particularly coming out of the pandemic and into an economic recovery and an effort to provide them with what is really an opportunity to build their workforce on their equipment and with their um production systems in mind and again this is true not just in manufacturing whether or not there should be some reimbursement some um investment of workforce dollars that actually supports an employer's participation in work based learning um i i think is something it's it's kind of a nemesis for those who cry free market and i'm one of them um but it it truly is turning out to be one of our biggest hurdles that the real job creators which are small and medium companies are the least able to take on this responsibility so well well emily as you pointed out and and i think montreal may have mentioned as well work-based learning needs to be a part of of education it needs to be a part of public education yeah part of public k-12 education it needs to be a part of community college education needs to be a part of university education all the way through graduate levels and we we support funding for other components of of education we we within within the educational right which is publicly funded generally and work-based learning needs to be treated the same way i think excellent we fund we fund the laboratories for learning inadequately but we fund laboratories for for learning in stem fields we've we've fund other other experiences that that students have because we know it's a part of the learning environment that we're creating for them within the educational community again k-12 community college university all the way through if we're really going to think that that work-face learning is an absolutely essential component of everyone's education then we have to think of it and i'm glad you brought up that policy side of the issue with work based learning because i think that's very important for the future otherwise we can we can we can have some very positive experiences and create very positive experiences with large corporations such but oftentimes particularly at the small and mid-sized communities in rural communities where you don't have those large corporations you you again uh make differences and create differences among those who can participate in those who can't without one line couldn't agree with you more gary you are so right and one of the things we need to think about is the educators educating these students whether it's k-12 or post-secondary they come out of graduate school burdened with student loan and student debt and unless we can invest or find creative ways to support our teachers who are educating our future workforce uh we are going to go round and round and survive that's exactly right well i would just say that remember folks the department of education is going to experience a 40 plus up for department for education driven programs and our national science foundation and particularly um coming through the ate centers which i know are more community college based in large measure in the workforce development field but the hunger or they're exhibiting just great interest in expanding across their domain into olive post-secondary which is a blessing um these are the two agencies where i think we could both from a policy and investment standpoint get to both issues um the incorporation of the work integrated learning i love that i'm going to steal that gary and manchu as you said both for instructors and faculty and our teachers the opportunity to be better positioned can i just jump in too because i just wanted to ask you um uh you know you know this whole idea it really strikes me this whole idea of getting teachers better prepared this is this is a different paradigm than i went to teachers college i wasn't taught anything about industry the workforce whatever i happen to go into the workforce and i acquired my workforce skills through working you know through being in a pharmaceutical company being an industry and then you know they sent me to leadership school or whatever how do you envision taking uh teachers or academics and retooling them yes a great question and again i think as you said we are still doing the same thing that you described was happening when you went to school where we have very standardized curriculum where we don't necessarily give these teachers an experience of the diversity of the student population that they are seeing in their classrooms the mindset has to change in the general population about a teacher teaching job a teaching job as we know sometimes it said if you can't do anything else go teach and that paradigm absolutely has to change there needs to be more respect because we're seeing this brain drain where students coming out of teaching colleges but not interested in going into teaching whether it's k-12 and this is it it's some of the most vulnerable areas where we need our best qualified teachers they're not going in there a because of the burden of student debt of student loan debt and secondly because there are other options we have to make teaching attractive and give it that comparative competitive advantage that is absolutely necessary for the initiatives that emily and gary have been talking about being a teacher myself i see the training and i see the gaps that's in there in the general education because general education doesn't address the diversity i mean you come to college and you have if you if you're interested you take something in black studies or you take something in special education but that's a choice that you make it's not an option that is offered that you should be made available to you mind you and russ i want to say um i guess i think one of our greatest challenges that we didn't mention in response to the challenge question and but that we ought to certainly make record of is uh been a career-long desire of mine to get to the deans of education in our university they are a kind of forgotten target population for those of us who have been trying to link education workforce development and economic development and it has been you're just so correct that it's about the traditional um educational program within our colleges of education that are producing our teachers we can't expect more of our teachers in understanding competency-based demand-driven education when we haven't addressed that within their curriculum or program of study and when we first a decade ago really launched the concept of regionalism and regional interventions because all of the education and workforce development resources devolved to the regional economic level and to this day we are launching new regional interventions it is those educators with boots on the ground that we rely on to understand how we need to change the content and incorporate work based learning and really innovate and disrupt traditional educational pathways um so if we're going to go back to the source as i think monsieur is recommending to a really and i think this is something we should have a conversation with nsf about and i'm sure the department of education would be interested as well of the convening of the deans of education for the purpose of linking education workforce and economic development for the betterment of the country yeah work work-based learning is a part of life-long learning also and while we think about it as as structured internship externships that happened in college or maybe even before it needs to move beyond that one of the things that one of the activities going on right now at wake forest university is development of a new master's degree program in translational biotechnology and it is a graduate program that is pointing its participants more to the private sector and to clinical translation and scaled bible manufacturing rather than traditional academic careers where you go bachelor's degree master's degree phd and then academic research but it's it's for for for this change that's occurring in our field around the movement of of the science and technology and and the jobs and the products from research and development to clinical translation which includes the clinical trials of new products in the medical field and then scaled up biomanufacturing of new products whether they be pharmaceuticals whether they be new tissue products or new organs that are being grown so so one of the things that that degree has done is incorporated externships in it so short term experiences in a graduate program to put students in um in biomanufacturing we also are beginning an externship program for medical students who are in medical school to put them also in that experience for uh short periods of of time you know eight to ten weeks of uh to to experience the whether it be biopharmaceuticals whether it be in other kinds of production and virus put them in a production environment to see what's that that's like it can be very valuable if you're on the user or prescriber end as a medical pro practicing medical doctor and then i go back to to something that and you have one of the very best models i know of and that is bringing teachers into the workplace later career teachers who are not in education college but have graduated who are working and who need the continued exposure and update of what's going on in the workplace and the bioscience industry fellows program that you have sponsored by nsf that you've been operating is is is one of the best models around uh for uh for doing that with nsf sponsorship making it happen uh so thinking about think about workforce development it's not something that ends when you complete college as learning does but is a part of lifelong learning as well and we are replicating your model uh russ and i should have mentioned this earlier that with all of the 16 institutes across the country all focused on major modernization and technology development are actually developing a proposal with ate centers where they will become the headquarters so to speak for professional development opportunity for practicing teachers with stipends during the summer to actually come work alongside and learn in a a really incredible national asset these um marvelous high bays and and learning hubs that the institutes provide in terms of facility technology r d and brilliant engineering teams to bring the teachers there to work alongside translate the the kind of work that would change content in their educational programming and actually take back the kind of activities for their students that will begin to integrate that new technology mindset into their student populations as well emily that is a great news to hear and i had heard that that might be forming i can tell you that the evaluations for this fellows program which ran six years was off the charts um and i think it was really basically because they were getting a chance to learn the other side of the business you know exactly right just get their hands dirty you know get out get and find out exactly what goes on from the other side it was really interesting because as we had approximately 60 people go through that from all over the nation and what we found was with i would say 95 of them and you know sorry many of them as gary knows were at the doctorate level had never been in an industry for any length of time they've done straight to doctorate and so you i think it's a great model i'm really happy to hear that um i i wanted to just ask you guys um uh have you got other models like that that come to mind that you've seen um where's we're at the stage now where i think you know some best practices but emily just before we jump into that conversation there has been a question come from the audience which they wanted to understand a little bit more as to why the registered apprentice was sort of a barrier type program oh boy um how much time do we have no uh it's just um so when i was assistant secretary of labor i administered the registered apprenticeship program let me suffice it to say that registered apprenticeship in this country was designed and is enforced by the u.s department of labor very much in its traditional roots of the construction industry where there were many more requirements for wage and hour standards and enforcement that led to an extensive amount of usd enforcement authority and paperwork and also a lot of um relationships some not voluntary or easy between management and labor unions um so that's a historic kind of baggage that the registered apprenticeship program brought into the u.s department of labor and it's been a long time coming we worked very hard when i was there to also approve competency-based versus seek time based apprenticeship and i guess that was my major issue with registered apprenticeship it was and to this day remains in large measure seat time based and c time driven although we've there's been progress toward competency-based apprenticeship programs and that was why there was an attempt to move toward something called industry recognized apprenticeship programs which would use all of the eight major components of apprenticeship everything we've all talked about and agreed to but not require the kind of federal government oversight or even state government oversight in a system that is bifurcated there are both state apprenticeship directors and federal directors and many apprentice employers who are trying to run apprenticeship programs are just kind of inundated and burdened by government oversight you know that can be good that can be really awful if you have to live with it so um the effort has been i i would guess i'd call it trying to lean the bureaucracy and still retain the quality and that's the critical component and it is a difficult balancing act so um particularly that baggage and history related to union um relationships was what held manufacturers back in large measure from pursuing apprenticeship as a training model so we're trying to get over those hurdles with new leadership continuing push to competency-based learning and support for more responsibility vesting with the apprenticeship manager and the employer um for his or her apprentices so that's that's my short version oh thank you it's really good i think that helps the people uh that are uh listening and participating gary any uh ideas in terms of best practices uh uh let me uh sort of add and it actually connects with some of the conversation we had about um apprenticeship and and registered apprenticeships and such and one of one of the the broader best practices i see it work across the workforce development area is is the skill standards movement and this this takes a lot of of forms uh and i know emily has worked in this area for a long time and we've worked together in it for a while but uh the the ability to define competency-based skill development in terms of standards that that can be adopted don't have to be can be adopted by employers educational institutions and other training professionals and supported by agencies whether it's the department of labor department of education the the overall workforce efforts at the federal and at state levels um are important and in some cases those are certifications of skills and those certifications can be uh as as as sort of mundane as as our typical licensing procedure for clinical health professionals for example in the country is a form of skill standards and learning the work that that has been done in in the bioscience and biotechnology field to uh define the core skill standards and medical device area that the national center for biotechnology workforce that you head up russ has has done we've done some recent work with the regenerative med development organization to define the skill needs and skill gaps nationally and internationally in the regenerative medicine field but but all of that skills standards movement i think is has helped move us towards that competency-based system that can help with a new model new ways of thinking about apprenticeship and new ways of thinking about educational institutions and employers working together to make sure the kinds of skills that are out there are needed and there's multiple examples of that some large some small but but i think overall the skill standards movement is one of the things that i see is as moving as in a very positive direction towards competency-based uh learning and and competency-based employment uh from the employment employer side gary can we add to that is that excellent articulation um the importance though for those who are pursuing um the kinds of standards that will be most beneficial for all involved that we cannot rely on the government and the national databases for example the bureau of labor statistics databases because of their age well in today's economy there is a critical component almost the critical component that leads to uh better knowledge of the the state what the standards should look like and that's in the transactional labor markets which are the local labor markets so you need to actually employ organizations who are very good at tapping the local labor market transactional data aggregating regionally statewide nationally and then globally and that becomes a significant addition to your ability to get to really good standards so it is something that the institutes are doing right now with the help of a globally recognized firm to get to a national portal that will incorporate that local labor market transactional data and align it and supplement our national databases that's just good that's exactly right and this in the skills standards the whole skill standards movement is has to be a dynamic process you can't define them and think well we got that one let's see six months later with change it's it's different i'm sorry no i was just gonna add since russ asked about best best practices but let me just say it's just so fascinating listening to you emily and gary and listening to the models you're describing again wasn't familiar with all of them but but i wanted to talk about a social science model which is based in the principles of brain-based learning and how we learn and we're learning so much more from that area of the science of how the human brain learns and the whole notion of neuroplasticity and then how it can be applied in secondary post-secondary and the workplace and one of the best practices here at landmark college is derived from this framework of universal design and and the whole notion of the tenets of universal design but when it gets down to the person level so at the micro level we talk about things such as creating this neutral non-judgmental space for dialogue which applies not just to the secondary but even post-secondary but also to the workplace we talk about things such as guiding identification of individual solutions but most importantly we talk about new understanding around executive function which is the part of our prefrontal cortex which is the higher order thinking part of our brain and how that doesn't develop according to the latest science fully developed until we are in our mid-20s to even later so kind of understanding that backdrop whether we are doing internships micro internships externships etc when we're working with the young adult population kind of incorporating the neuroscience of learning into how we work with them whi
2021-10-12